Buttons

Garden Plants

Well they have to have a place to live, and my wet studio is the safest - read the only truly cat free zone - in the house.

Here's a look at part of my button stash! Some of these I plan to clean up and sell as I will never use them, plus it'll also fund the purchase of more buttons that I will use!

Busy Busy

I took a respite from all of the filming and video editing and made a deliberate mess of my studio table. All I managed to get done is this piece of paper, and it's darling, simply darling I tell you.

Rust Piece

New Work In Progress

"Beware" 45"w x 71"l. Cotton fabric dye painted with natural dyes. Now all I have to do is get it backed and stitched. I'll iron the fabric first of course, though I do like the grid formation, I'll have to experiment with this idea before I do the stitching.

Hayfever

It's really hard to create when your allergies make your head feel as if half your brain has been sucked out, through your left eye. I woke up this morning hubby asked me how I felt and I replied with I feel as if part of my brain is actually missing. Of course the sloshy feeling in my head only amplifies these thoughts. He informed me that he didn't see the mother ship land last night so my brain should still be in there somewhere.

Anyway... my digital camera is crippled but I'm still able to take pics, I just can't zoom in and out, hopefully next month I'll be able to spring for a new camera???

Sales of the new DVD have been brisk, it's due for release on May 1st, I'm excited and still shocked that I even have the capacity to do something like this. I guess that's ok it'll keep me humble. Now to get the book to a printer and get it on the shelves as well.

Here's a pic of my crab apple tree, just one of many plants and trees that are blooming, making my head scream. I woke up yesterday morning at 4 am with a headache so bad I thought I'd be sick. A couple of allergy pills later and I was fine. Tis the season for everything that is beautiful that causes an allergic reaction.

Altering Books

I have this old book here I was going to alter, simply because I love the name "The Rum Seller's Daughter or Woman in the Temperance Reform" It is really old, and like I said I was going to alter it, until I looked at the copyright date, 1874, and trust me it looks old enough to be from 1874. The book has prints in it, which once upon a time were probably black and white, they are quite beautiful. The pages are now brown, as is the cover which I'm sure th cover was orignally brown. So I'm keeping it for my own collection, I may photocopy some of it's pages for altering.

Life is in the Details

Prairie

We went out the a local prairie marsh, no birds but there had been a controlled burn done recently.

The Love of My Life

making like a pez dispenser

Spring Cleaning

One thing about not having the housekeeper here bugging me on Fridays I actually got a very large section of junk cleared out. No this wasn't her responsibility, but since I'm stuck cleaning I took it the extra mile.

Oh the reason I had a housekeeper is I have degenerative joint disease adn really bad, I'm not supposed to pick anything up over 5 pounds. I'm going to have to get a smaller dog I guess, she weighs about 15 pounds.

Anyway... I have plans to clean out our bedroom later this week, the excess furniture is going to go to the attic. We have 5 dressers in our bedroom, three of which can go bye-bye. I'll put my dresser in the east bedroom, for the sake of not having clutter everywhere. I want a peaceful serene bedroom, and since my clothes are not in our bedroom closet anyway it doesn't really matter if my dresser is in their either.

Personally, speaking of our bedroom, I'd love nothing more than to rip out hte door and the wall going to our closet, it's huge actually, long and narrow huge, with the door at one end. This makes it impossible to get to anything that's any further back than the door jam. If I thought hubby wouldn't have a seizure I'd start tearing it out this week! Then we'd actually have some useful storage space in this house.

The house is a 1905 Queen Anne wanna be, it's goregous actually, but the closets in this house, well they are non-existant! And we have major major storage issues because of the lack of closets. And the ones we do have are most inaccessible, making my life miserable. I'd ask how a person could build a house with no closets but I do know why, they used to be taxed as rooms.

Housekeepers

Mine quit, she said that I was talking down to her. Yep I'm guilty! 100% pure de guilty. I guess she never quite got the message that I wasn't paying her $15.00 an hour to stand around and gab all of the time. And one would think that after a year she would know to come in clean the bathrooms, the floor, vacuum and dust and not have to ask every single time.

I thought the rules were simple enough but apparently not. Wash the kitchen and bathroom floors every week, and the wood floors throughout the house every two weeks. the week you don't wash the wood floors you dust everything!

Too hard??? Apparently.

So now I'm looking for a new housekeeper, preferably a crew that can come in and get it done in two hours, instead of four like the last gal. Hubby told me to start interviewing businesses that advertise cleaning services.

Kitchen Floors

Both dog kennels are in the kitchen, the part that is just bare plywood. I'm tired of it being bare plywood, and since I am the one who has to wash it now, the housekeeper quit last week, I'm thinking of sanding and painting it, to get rid of the ickies. The mop and the broom both get caught on the bare plywood shards, I'm not sure how the pets deal with this issue, I always seem to get splinters when I walk on it barefoot. No I wish I could say that this is a temporary thing but it's been like this for about 10 years now. Husband can't seem to make up his mind on what he wants to do. We have the flooring, 300 square feet of maple. Why he doesn't plane it down so we can install it is beyond me. He has his reasons, I just don't agree with them. So, in the spirit of having a floor that is easy to clean I'm going to paint the floor, probably in May sometime, cause I'll be using an oil based paint, I'm going for durability here, and I'm thinking some catty cornered stripes might be in store!!! :-)

Warning never leave a wife with 65 gallons of mistints and a roller brush alone, it could cause vertigo!

Wet Dog

Well today I spent part of the afternoon bathing dogs. I didn't photograph silky, well because a wet weirmeraner and a dry weimeraner look pretty much the same, she's blue either way. I did get a snap of Angel, before and after. She's wet in the after shot. She doesn't know it yet but she's about a half hour away from a good combing/brushing. I'm waiting for her to dry off a bit more first. I also clipped her nails, she's very shy about this part of grooming, and washed her bedding and her dog kennel tray. John pulled the trays out of both kennels for me. Silky's tray is too big for me to handle by myself.

In Progress Sample

More color has been added, along with pattern and no it's not done yet so stay tuned!

Tree branch?

Oh yeah that's half of our redbud, behind the daffodils I drew. It fell down yesterday, I noticed it as I was pulling out of the driveway, it was blocking my view, hanging over the sidewalk. Brenda helped me move the branch, or tree half however you want to view this. Anyway, it would appear that the tree is rotting, there are some sort of bugs in the wound on the tree. I was wondering why the tree seemed to be missing so many blossoms when everyone elses redbuds were beautiful.

Here's a picture of our neighbors redbud, it's how our tree looked once a upon a time. I'll have to call the city on Monday and have them come remove the tree, since it's technically on their property, otherwise known as the car park strip.

What I did today

Aside from fill orders and run errands, to the post office etc..., I actually got to sit outide for five minutes. I did a 5 minute sketch of my daffodils, it's supposed to storm here tonight so I suspect they won't be here in the morning.

Silk Velvet Samples

Two of these were overdyed twice, the first time with Madder Lac, the second time with indigo. The base color - pink - is from cochineal.

More Samples

Overdyed silk fabrics, using only natural dyes. Some of the base colors are yellow - weld, some are pink - cochineal. Madder lac was used for the overdye.

Sample

Painted with natural dyes - silk fabric.

Sample

This piece was painted using natural dyes, Madder Lac, Chlorphyll, Logwood Grey, Indigo, and Osage Orange. After it's done curing, and has been washed, I will go back into the piece with pigments on the bottom portion, and maybe add some more Osage Orange to the top to make the sky look more orange.

Parting Shots

This is the last picture my digital camera took, and since it no longer wants to work it'll probably be the very last one. Ode to a digital camera that I loved so!

Lighting

I forgot to say about shooting video, WOW the lights are bright, we used my lights, I have two photography lights and I really need two more, but it's amazing the amount of lumens in the room. And it was pretty quite as we shut everything off, except for me of course ;-)

But I thought I should say, for those concerned cause I know you'll ask, no we didn't use the ceiling lights (fluorescents) we used real tungsten lamps.

Video Update

Well we filmed half of the video tonight, I'll be filming the other half tomorrow night, it's really weird having my faced/mug filmed, no make-up I'm highly allergic, so in the finished product I'll probabaly look like a vampire. Oh well there's always the next video.

I can't wait to see the finished product, should be interesting.

Sink Area of wet studio

Sink Area of wet studio.

Wet Studio Another View

I have since cleaned out the junk, but here's another view of my wet studio.

Black Gutta gone wrong

Gone very wrong to be exact, it's Pebeo's black gutta that never really sat up right, which leads me to suspect that it has a short shelf life. I recouped the piece, barely. I'll add more colors to it later. Madder-Lac, Cochineal, Indigo.

Dressing the studio part 4

I'm going to leave the fabric off of the bins in the corner, it's too much. In fact I think I may take a piece or two off of the design wall, break it up a bit.

The Studio

Well part of it anyway. This is the west end you are looking at, the room is essentially 13 x 26 feet, well if you don't count for all of the space lost by cabinets, shelves, and counters.

Dressing the Studio Part three

The corner without the fabric hanging on the bins.

Dressing the Studio Part Deux

Ok here's what it looks like now. And I even hid the corner that was a bit unsitely. I will be hauling all of the other stuff out, that looks junky, later. I have to finish making "in progress" samples first.

Dressing the Studio

We're shooting video here Wednesday night and I need to "dress" the studio. Which means cleaning all of hte junk out of here and decorating it with all of my art work.

Auditioning fabrics to go on the design wall, art cloth I have created, in addition to getting all of the samples staged - meaning having the samples for each technique done in stages.

Here's a pic of my design wall, hiding all of the not so pretty crates, hey you do what you have to do sometimes. The upside is I now have a place to hand my art cloth from.

The indigo is dried now it has a nice mottled look to it, it'll be a bit lighter after it's been washed. I will need to add more dye to the bottom third of the piece as it's too light. I may chose to add this as stitching instead of more dye. 

Sheet Pattern 

Shower curtain 

Untitled it's still wet. I used Instant Indigo, Logwood Purple, Quebracho Green, Chestnut, and a very bad batch of Cochineal - mold does bad things to the red dyes. Silk Crepe de Chine and Gutta Resist. It needs to dry yet, I just got the last batch of blue onto the fabric. 

Pepper 

Fresh Air Part Two

Little pretties in my garden, I planted several hundred of these one year and have no idea what happened to them. Chipmunks???

Fresh Air

I've been trying to spend an hour outside working in my garden/yard each day. Slowly but surely we are beating back the dead dried brush and raking up all of the leaves around this place. Tomorrow we start the ardous task of removing all of the junk on the property, and it's amazing how much we have collected. A lot of it came from the old deck/wheelchair ramp we tore down, and then my loving husband salvaged a bunch of arts and crafts style windows from a dumpster, yada yada yada.

Whatever right.

Well the yard is starting to look really nice. I've even decided, and normally I woudn't do this, to kill off the creeping charlie and replant grass in the yard. I said I wouldn't normally do this but I've come up allergic to the stuff, so it must go, along with that new wasp nest I found today - that I'm deathly allergic to.

I'll have to take pics tomorrow, of the yard. While it'll never make the pages of Country Gardens or Fine Gardening, for me it's lookin real good. I am slowly building my flower seed stores back up, after hubby left mine outside for two weeks last summer - it seems it rained that whole two weeks as well - and am now planting perinneals. Mainly I'm going for the native type flowers as they ususally need very little watering. And then there's the herbs and the medicinal plants - which usually just look really nice - like foxglove for instance.

Exercise Hell

I went shopping, my first mistake, for exercise clothes. I've come to the conclusion that obesity in America is a myth that needs to be perpetuated so that we can have someone to discriminate against.

If it were truly at epidemic proportions as the news claims it is, then there would be more in the way of exercise clothes for fat people. That's right I used that word, FAT!!!

I'm fat, and I can't find a lick of exercise clothing that'll fit me, and by standards of fat I'm not as fat as some, but more fat than others. In order to wear the exercise gear I'm finding at Target, and the sports stores in town, I'd have to loose a hundred pounds, but by then I wouldn't be fat anymore, I'd be what is considered normal wieght for my height and age.

From what I looked at today only skinny people have the right to have comfortable clothes when exercising.

I'm wondering are these companies embarrassed by fat people?

Do they believe that only skinny people have the rights to feel good when exercising???

Personally I'm tired of wearing my jeans to work out in, it's still too cool in central Iowa to wear shorts outside.

So I'm proposing a campaign here: I want all the fat people who read this to write the various sports clothing producers and complain.

And I really mean complain.

Tell them you want exercise clothing in your size that fits correctly. Maybe there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic if we had incentives to lose weight, starting with proper fitting clothes and shoes! And if they don't see a problem then maybe it really is a myth after all and I'm sol on finding exercise clothes that fit.

Signed - your local fat quilter who doesn't want to be as fat anymore

Exercise Hell

I went shopping, my first mistake, for exercise clothes. I've come to the conclusion that obesity in America is a myth that needs to be perpetuated so that we can have someone to discriminate against.

If it were truly at epidemic proportions as the news claims it is, then there would be more in the way of exercise clothes for fat people. That's right I used that word, FAT!!!

I'm fat, and I can't find a lick of exercise clothing that'll fit me, and by standards of fat I'm not as fat as some, but more fat than others. In order to wear the exercise gear I'm finding at Target, and the sports stores in town, I'd have to loose a hundred pounds, but by then I wouldn't be fat anymore, I'd be what is considered normal wieght for my height and age.

From what I looked at today only skinny people have the right to have comfortable clothes when exercising.

I'm wondering are these companies embarrassed by fat people?

Do they believe that only skinny people have the rights to feel good when exercising???

Personally I'm tired of wearing my jeans to work out in, it's still too cool in central Iowa to wear shorts outside.

So I'm proposing a campaign here: I want all the fat people who read this to write the various sports clothing producers and complain.

And I really mean complain.

Tell them you want exercise clothing in your size that fits correctly. Maybe there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic if we had incentives to lose weight, starting with proper fitting clothes and shoes! And if they don't see a problem then maybe it really is a myth after all and I'm sol on finding exercise clothes that fit.

Signed - your local fat quilter who doesn't want to be as fat anymore.

Old Love New Passion

An old love came to town recently - drawing, color, pattern, art. I went about the house today and started photographing every conceivable element I could think of, haven't been to the bathroom yet though.

And you know I have to say I have a very beautiful house!

Lots of architectural elements, even the old furniture, that I don't notice much except when it's dusty, has all sorts of floral motifs, not to mention the tapestry like fabrics of these pieces. Dressers are by far the most interesting. Seems that that every flat surface, and even a few corners, have been carved with some sort of relief. I've decided that the china and knick knacks are next in line for photographing, we have lots of odds and ends mismatched stuff, procured mainly for the beautiful motif or colors.

Links to Blogs

Oh and after I swallow that chunk of moon I'd love to have a links section on the right hand side of the blog, I read a lot of really cool blogs and visit some really interesting websites, it'd be nice to have the space to list them. Impossible? Maybe.

Blog Changes

Ok I'd really like to know how to change the color of my blog! After that I'd love to add a header image up at the top of the blog, and for the Up and Coming section I'd like to add images for my upcoming online classes, and images for the books I have written that are now available or will soon be available. When we are done with that I'd also like a chunk of the moon ;-)

Frustration

The bitter taste of frustration is so well... frustratiting. I've been trying to get video to upload to my teaching forum for over a week now. And while it's finally doing so tonight my dsl has decided to move at a snails pace! I don't know if uploading at 3 am instead would have helped or not.

And I've carved all of these wonderful stamps out of this speedball speedycut rubber stamp carving material and the stamps are literally falling apart before eyes. I should have known something was up the stuff was pretty flimsy feeling when I bought it but it was the only chunk left on the shelf! What a waste of time an money! The Speedball Speedy Stamp stuff, it's pink, is a lot firmer, but good luck finding it locally. I have a really large chunk fo the speedy cut rubber. So I guess I'll chock it up to one time use only.

Here's what I've been doing while I've been waiting for my video to upload. I decided to go back into my journal and decorate a page.